Last-ditch meetings leave UN vote on a knife edge

NEW YORK: In a city where the top-dollar apartments nudge $100 million he might go unnoticed, but as the Foreign Affairs Minister, Bob Carr, headed off to another meeting in New York on Tuesday evening, the frown that creased his brow was worth all of $25 million.

He hunkers on the upper eastside - in a suite at the Carlyle Hotel, making a last effort to corral votes for Canberra's tilt at one of five non-permanent seats on the United Nations Security Council.

Up against Finland and Luxembourg, this three-cornered contest for two of the seats is tougher than any this former NSW premier encountered as he did the rounds for more than a decade with the bovver boys at Labor's Sussex Street headquarters in Sydney.

Like diplomats for the two European contenders, Mr Carr is guarded - restricting his comments to well-rehearsed talking points that are not likely to cause offence in the opposing camps.

It fell to unnamed sources elsewhere in New York's sprawling UN diplomatic enclave to hint at points of anxiety in Australia's $25-plus million campaign - like that Security Council heavyweights Moscow and Beijing are not expected to support the bid because of Canberra's alliance with Washington, and that the Chinese might be attempting to lure away some African votes on which Australia is relying.

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Unclear too was the response among undecided countries to an effort to blunt claims that Australia's recent tempering of its position on all UN votes about Israel was a crude bid to win the support of Arab and Muslim countries.

The former prime minister John Howard has been blamed for steering Canberra towards slavish support for Washington on the Israel question - and that Labor merely had taken the country back to what traditionally had been a more moderate stance.

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More positively, Luxembourg apparently has made little headway with its pitch that small countries should support the small candidate.

A good share of that constituency is to be found among the island nations of the Caribbean and the Pacific - many of which have indicated they will be voting for Australia.

Mr Carr acknowledged support from the Caribbean and the Pacific, in explaining what he described as ''strong cross-regional support'' for Australia. Another region in which the country was campaigning was Africa, where Australian mining investment was worth an estimated $50 billion.

"That's why we have such a big aid budget in Africa," he said. "Apart from the fact that it's a good thing for us to offer 1000 Australian Award scholarships in Africa, we also happen to have a big commercial interest there.

"It's competitive, strongly contested," Mr Carr said of the election among the Western European and Other Group [of countries] in which Australia competes at the UN.

"Traditionally the results in this group are pretty sharp - we expect the result could be tight."